VietNamNet Bridge - To improve the quality of services at HCM City’s Tan Son Nhat airport, the taxi lobby at the airport has doubled in size and super-high speed Wi-Fi system will be installed.

Dang Tuan Tu, Director of Tan Son Nhat International Airport, said the taxi lobby was expanded to relieve passengers in the peak hour at the domestic terminal. The new taxi lobby opened on December 23 and the work will help double the capacity during the Christmas and New Year.

In parallel with the expansion of the taxi lobby, Tan Son Nhat Airport is building a 5-storey garage in front of the domestic terminal with a total area of more than 68,000 m2. The work will be put into use in March 2016.

Leaders of Tan Son Nhat airport hoped that the new projects would help deal with the current limitations, of the airport, such as lack of parking places, no paths from the domestic terminal to the taxi lobby, and the conflict between personal vehicles and taxis.

In response to passengers’ complaints on the speed of the wireless Internet service at the airport, Tu said the airport had signed a cooperation agreement with TMS Company to build a super-high wireless Internet network at terminals, which began operating on December 21.

He said that the airport has installed 164 wi-fi transmitters at the two international and domestic terminals; each transmitter can serve up to over 100 users. Inspection at the domestic terminal on December 22 showed that the service quality was stable.

Also on December 22, the airport authorities relocated the security screening station in hall B to increase the area of queuing for passengers from 150 m2 to 250 m2. One more security screener was installed to quickly clear passengers during peak hours.

According to the airport director, the airport authorities tried to redress rain leaking in the lobby. However, it did not rain much at this time so the airport could not check whether leaking still occurred or not.

In October 2015, the international airport of Tan Son Nhat was named among the top ten worst airports in Asia in the year by The Guide to Sleeping in Airports website.

The things that passengers were not satisfied with at the airport were: poor quality of wireless Internet service, dirty toilets and little choice of food services. In addition, the airport faced the problem of lack of parking space, and taxi operations were messy because of severe overload. Some passengers also complained that the airport staff extorted money or stole their luggage.

Noi Bai terminal T1 to get upgrade

The Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV) plans to upgrade domestic terminal T1 at Noi Bai International Airport, with expenditure expected to reach 244 billion VND (10.84 million USD).

In a document recently sent to the Ministry of Transport, the company said it would expand the area of the terminal and repair the staircases, check-in desks and luggage conveyor belts.

The work will begin next June and be finished within two years, helping increase the capacity of the terminal to serve about 15 million passengers a year instead of the current nine million.

"This is needed to meet rapid growth of the aviation market and assure the quality of passenger services at Noi Bai International Airport by 2018," a representative of the ACV reportedly said.

"It is possible that the terminal will not be able to meet necessary exploitative requirements in the coming months without the upgrade," the representative added.

The passenger throughput at T1 is expected to reach 12 million in 2015, after hitting nearly 10 million during the past nine months, according to the company.

T1 currently has an area of 115,000 square metres with 100 check-in ​counters, six luggage conveyor belts and 19 boarding gates.

International terminal T2 at Noi Bai began operations a year ago with an investment capital of 900 million USD, with the capability of handling some 10 million passengers each year.

Noi Bai is an important airport linking air routes from Europe, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia and the Asia Pacific. Thirty-six domestic and international airlines are operating here, with an average 340 flights per day.

The ACV has 22.43 trillion VND (996.89 million USD) in charter capital. It was designated by the Government this year to develop the Long Thanh airport, which will be located in southern Dong Nai Province to handle up to 100 million passengers a year when it is fully completed by 2050.

The company launched an initial public offering on December 10, and plans to offer strategic investors a stake of 20 percent.

Linh Nhat